Audiobook13 hours
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
Written by Walter Rodney and Angela Davis
Narrated by Mirron Willis
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
The classic work of political, economic, and historical analysis, powerfully introduced by Angela Davis.
In his short life, the Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the leading thinkers and activists of the anticolonial revolution, leading movements in North America, South America, the African continent, and the Caribbean. In each locale, Rodney found himself a lightning rod for working class Black Power. His deportation catalyzed 20th century Jamaica's most significant rebellion, the 1968 Rodney riots, and his scholarship trained a generation how to think politics at an international scale. In 1980, shortly after founding of the Working People's Alliance in Guyana, the thirty-eight-year-old Rodney would be assassinated.
In his magnum opus, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Rodney incisively argues that grasping "the great divergence" between the west and the rest can only be explained as the exploitation of the latter by the former. This meticulously researched analysis of the abiding repercussions of European colonialism on the continent of Africa has not only informed decades of scholarship and activism, it remains an indispensable study for grasping global inequality today.
In his short life, the Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the leading thinkers and activists of the anticolonial revolution, leading movements in North America, South America, the African continent, and the Caribbean. In each locale, Rodney found himself a lightning rod for working class Black Power. His deportation catalyzed 20th century Jamaica's most significant rebellion, the 1968 Rodney riots, and his scholarship trained a generation how to think politics at an international scale. In 1980, shortly after founding of the Working People's Alliance in Guyana, the thirty-eight-year-old Rodney would be assassinated.
In his magnum opus, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Rodney incisively argues that grasping "the great divergence" between the west and the rest can only be explained as the exploitation of the latter by the former. This meticulously researched analysis of the abiding repercussions of European colonialism on the continent of Africa has not only informed decades of scholarship and activism, it remains an indispensable study for grasping global inequality today.
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Reviews for How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
Rating: 4.414835141758242 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
182 ratings15 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This insightful book is a must read for all Africans.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book carefully analysed the question of why Africa was underdeveloped. The next level would be how Africa can educate itself out of the design it finds itself
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This publication is highly recommended for everyone. The topics are relevant and the insights are timeless in addressing the root cause of Africa’s problems today.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Equally as informative as it is dry. Like reading a thorough textbook.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Walter Rodney was a great gift to Caribbean thought. His contributions to our appreciation of our African-ness remains critical to our place in the Diaspora, Africa and the World.
A true leader who was taken away far too soon. He gave his life on seaech for truth and true freedom. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is a book that should be read by every African
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5First published in 1972 and listened to in 2022. A fantastic insight to the origin of our problems in Africa. This book should have been made compulsory reading in every secondary school in Africa. The author not only accurately analyzed the genesis of our problems in Africa but also predicted the trajectory of most African nations in 2022. Walter Rodney was definitely ahead of his time and it’s too bad that he never saw the actualization of his dreams for Africa. His death at the young age of 43 robbed Africa of one of its greatest minds. But I am glad that I got to listen to his wisdom through this medium.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5His ability to clearly visualise and understand the problems, and causes of under development is outstanding.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fantastic book, a must read for everyone especially the African extraction.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The book provides insights on the way that European countries secured their wealth from taking the raw resources of Africa, putting systems in place that restricted opportunities for Africans to control their own countries and helping us to understand the challenges that still exist today in many African countries.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It is good to see Africa from different perspectives. It is good to listen about Africa history and slavery.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The book explores the reasons as to why Africa got mired in poverty mainly on the account of European colonization.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A highly informative and thought provoking piece. A must read!
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Just excuses and finger pointing,if it wasn't for Europeans they would still be in the stone age.
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Guyanan intellectual Walter Rodney wrote this book directly after the 1960s wave of African independence declarations, to show why Africa was so underdeveloped compared to the 'First World', and who was to blame for this. A consistently intelligent and politically involved Marxist thinker, Rodney was one of the second generation of black socialists to write about African issues, after the tradition of CLR James and Eric Williams, the former of whom tutored Rodney. "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa" is probably Rodney's magnum opus of popular science, aimed at a general public, and very accessible and informative.Rodney describes in chronological sequence the development of Africa as a continent and the way in which the Europeans interfered with it. Going from the earliest African empires and states and their social relations, via the first wave of slave-trading, to full-blown colonialism, Rodney shows us how Europeans consistently attacked, pillaged, exploited, suppressed, enslaved, divided and discriminated against Africans, and the enormous impact the various stages of slavery and colonialism had in destroying the indigenous opportunities for coming out of feudalism into capitalist and industrialized societies. It is truly remarkable, given how short a time Africa has had to develop on its own as a modern society, how quickly African states have been able to modernize, and how strong the resilience of the various African peoples is to the enormous destruction they have had to endure. Rodney shows us all this with excellent writing and sensible use of 'bourgeois' sources, allowing the interested layman to gain all the necessary broad background information on the history of European involvement in Africa.Of necessity, the book is sometimes rather annoyingly concise and vague about the specifics of colonial policies, destruction of early indigenous development etc., things about which one would want to know more. Rodney provides a reading list for more information at the end of every chapter, but since this book is from the 1960s, it is dubious whether such lists are still useful considering the improvements made in radical scholarship on Africa since. The timing of the book also makes it such that there is practically nothing on African states since independence, as most independence declarations had happened only shortly before its publication. Moreover, Rodney is very saccharine about the influence of the 'socialist' states such as the USSR and China on Africa, which he exclusively paints in positive terms. Certainly the Leninists have had a vastly better influence on African development than any Western nation ever has, but the USSR and China had their own interests to defend in Africa as well, and were not there purely for humanitarian purposes, as Rodney sometimes makes it seem. Nonetheless, this is a good general book on the legacy of European destruction in Africa, and it thoroughly refutes all the common arguments in defense of colonialism in that continent.